Kasich linking careers, education

Friday

Nov 9, 2012 at 12:01 AMNov 9, 2012 at 10:14 AM

The Republican governor and the mostly Africa-American and Latino students were gathered at the Huntington National Bank Business Service Center as part of Kasich's new pilot program designed to help children realize their career aspirations before they graduate from high school. The program is called "Road to Readiness" - in which 21 central Ohio companies and organizations have agreed to host high-school juniors from 15 Columbus schools for one day with the purpose of providing the students a glimpse of both the business atmosphere and of success.

Joe Vardon, The Columbus Dispatch

Gov. John Kasich settled onto a stool and looked toward the 20 or so Mifflin High School students seated across from him.

“OK, first of all, is there anybody here who wants to be rich?” Kasich asked.

The Republican governor and the mostly Africa-American and Latino students were gathered at the Huntington National Bank Business Service Center as part of Kasich’s new pilot program designed to help children realize their career aspirations before they graduate from high school.

The program is called “Road to Readiness” — in which 21 central Ohio companies and organizations have agreed to host high-school juniors from 15 Columbus schools for one day with the purpose of providing the students a glimpse of both the business atmosphere and of success.

The students’ host yesterday was Stephen Steinour, the chairman, president and CEO of Huntington Bancshares.

“Here’s ... what my dream would be,” Kasich said to the students, beginning to explain to them the broader goals of his program. “For all of you to come here once a week for like four or five hours, like on a Friday.

“That’s my dream, that we would get you here, and you would hang around people that are successful. And you would learn from them, you know, the way you dress, the way you talk, the way you walk in the hall, that’s important. And then you’d also learn a little bit about what they do.”& amp; amp; amp; amp; lt; /p>

Kasich’s goals for the program are actually much larger. In an effort to better align businesses’a a a a l / needs with workers’ skills, the governor wants more students to get the proper education for the job they intend to pursue — be it from a four-year college, a community college or a vocational school.

For that to happen more quickly, students would need to have career options in mind before they graduate from high school so they can be directed toward the proper training. Kasich ultimately wants students to begin gaining exposure to possible career choices in the first grade, with that exposure increasing and maturing as the student gets older.

The groundwork for this to begin in August was already laid through the passage of House Bill 316 this year.

“We hope this is just the beginning,” said Alex Fischer, president and CEO of the Columbus Partnership, a major participant in the pilot program. “We’re definitely going to do a get-together after the fact, a postmortem to understand how we can improve it. ... Whether or not this should happen week in and week out is a provocative question for those of us in Columbus that are concerned about public education.”

During Kasich’s session with the students yesterday, Bertha Jaramillo, 16, told the governor that the program was “a really good idea because some of us don’t know what we want to do.”

“This opens up a new pathway,” she said.

Before Kasich spoke, Da’Jha-Nique Young, 17, told The Dispatch she is interested in working at a Huntington call center as a result of her morning experience there.

In past speeches where Kasich has laid out his desire to spark children’s career interests at a younger age, he used professional sports as an example of an unrealistic goal that can prevent children from focusing on the benefit their educations can have on their eventual careers.

Yesterday two students mentioned sports as their primary interest — one said football, the other baseball — and Kasich this time asked them what they had planned after retirement.

“Once you’ve made it, you get old and you get out,” Kasich said of pro sports. “They have a list of all these people — Allen Iverson, you know who he is? Bankrupt. What’s Allen Iverson going to do?”